I agree that the metric is awful for any reasonable interpretation that a viewer would make. However, they managed to make Texas, Missouri, West Virginia, and C

I agree that the metric is awful for any reasonable interpretation that a viewer would make. However, they managed to make Texas, Missouri, West Virginia, and Connecticut stand out, with Oregon and Rhode Island being coastal states that also fared poorly, so the possible conclusions about the "south" from this map aren't obvious to me.